The New American Diet: How Secret "Obesogens" Are Making Us Fat And The New Superfoods That Will Flatten Your Belly for Good!
Press Play and Listen to the Boot Camp FX Coaching Call with Curtis Ludlow and Guest Coach Stephen Perrine:
Curtis Joel Ludlow: Hello everyone, this is Curtis Joel Ludlow with another Boot Camp FX coaching session.
Today's guest coach is
Steve Perrine.
Steve is the author of
The New American Diet, Editor of
Children's Health Magazine and Editor at large for
Men's Health Magazine.
He says that everything we've been taught weight loss is wrong and in this coaching session. Steve will reveal the revolutionary new plan that will strip away pounds from your belly, change the way you look, feel and live.
Steve, thank you for taking the time to chat with us.
Stephen Perrine: Curtis, thank you very much for having me here.
Curtis: You're welcome. Now, I know your time is limited so let's just get right into it.
Your new book is The New American Diet: How secret "obesogens" are making us fat and the new superfoods that will flatten your belly for good. Tell me, what is The New American Diet?
Stephen: Well, a lot of the information that we think of as is, kind of, standard dietary information. It's based on science that was done 40-50 years ago. Science has said things like salmon was a very healthy option cause it was loaded with
Omega-3, and steak was a bad option for you. But the reality is that, the food that we ate has changed dramatically since all the traditional food research was done.
So, The New American Diet looks at food as it is today and talks a lot about why certain foods that we assume are good for us are not necessarily good for us. In certain food that has been "demonized" may actually be healthier choices in some instance.
And we're talking about, not just meats, we're talking about produce and we reveal, sort of, the information about why these foods are different than the foods that scientists studied and based their assumptions from.
Curtis: Okay. Now you say there are "obesogens"? What are the obesogens?
Stephen:
Obesogen. The word "obesogen" was a recently coined term by researchers studying something called Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. You probably heard a lot over the past several months over the chemicals
BPA, which is the chemical found in plastic that leach into food. About 93%of American's have FBPA, detectable levels of FBPA in their bodies right now. That means, probably, you and I Curtis.
And BPA is an estrogenic, it mimics estrogen, it blocks the action of testosterone. And you could, if you know anything about the actions of hormones, you can, kind of, see what that would mean.
It's as though, each person is getting little, tiny doses of female hormones that undermines muscle growth and increases our body's willingness to store fat.
So BPA and other chemicals that leach our plastic are "obesogens", they're Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.
Pesticides are also endocrine disruptors and the 13 most commonly used pesticides are links to
Endocrine Disrupting Action. They have been classified as "obesogens". They are found on our produce, they're found in our drinking water.
One of the things we talk about in depth is why certain foods, particularly apples, pears, peaches, strawberries, lettuce, they may be very, very healthy for you. Then Franklin said it's "an apple a day, keeps the doctor away". But then Franklin didn't have to worry about what was being sprayed on those apples.
So when we eat a healthy food but one that may carry 13 different chemicals that cause weight gain. We have to rethink that food. So pesticides are obesogens.
Hormones, given to these, are obesogens. The average industrially farmed cow has had 6 different hormones, 3 of them natural:
testosterone,
estrogen and
progesterone. And 3 of them are artificial including PBA which is one of the, well actually, is the most powerful steroids used by body builders.
Curtis: Really.
Stephen: And we know what a large of dose of PBA does to the human body over a short period of time. No study has ever been done to say what a small dose of PBA administered to the human body over and over and over and over again, does.
But we do know that PBA, among these other hormones, interfere with the hormonal system. They inspire weight gain, they are obesogens.
Soy contains two naturally occurring chemicals: genistein and daidzein. These two chemicals are
estrogenic and they have the same effect on our bodies as taking estrogen supplements would. Now, in its natural raw form having some edamami or some tofu that's fine but soy is now in all sorts of foods: bread, cereal, cookies.
We're eating an enormous amount of soy all the time in the chicken that we eat, and the beef that we eat and the pork that we eat, and the fish, that is farmed, that we eat are also eating soy.
And so because
you are what you eat and you are what you eat - eats. We're not only getting soy in our diet but we're getting these chemicals through the animals that we eat which are being fed soy. None of these animals evolved to eat soy. So the soy chemicals in those animals, we're now getting when we eat them. Soy, in these refined forms, is an obesogen.
And then also we talk about sugars, added sugars, in particular fructose which can interfere with the body's ability to process Leptin.
Leptin is the hormone that tells you when you are full.
So if someone who's in what we call the Hypocaloric State, meaning there are no regular basis taking in more calories than you burn.
Fructose can quash Leptin response and therefore you always think you are hungry even when you are full. That inspires weight gain; fructose and other sugars are obesogens.
So the book looks at these various ways that our foods have changed. Atlantic salmon, for example, is a great food to look at. There's no such thing as a wild Atlantic salmon, they're extinct.
Curtis: Really.
Stephen: The only Atlantic salmon available today is farmed
Atlantic salmon,
those fish are fed soy. They are lower in Omega-3 fatty acids, higher in Omega-6 fatty acids. And so the really healthy Omega-3 blast you think you're getting. You're not getting quite as much as you think you are. That healthy pink color that you see on Atlantic salmon fillet, it's not natural. Famed Atlantic salmon are white. When farmers give their salmon these soy pellets, they get to choose from a variety of colors of die that they want in those pellets, to die the salmon's flesh. So that pink flesh you're eating is actually dyed white flesh.
Curtis: Wow! That is really gross.
Stephen: It is really gross.
90% of the shrimp that we eat today are farmed shrimp. Farmed shrimps are grown in pits that are essentially like backyard swimming pool, they are loaded with chlorine, pesticides and other chemicals that has been linked to obesity. They are also usually treated with a chemical that prevent them from discoloring during shipment. That chemical is also an obesogen.
So there are all these chemicals being added into our food, so we wanted to see, is there any way of eating that would avoid all these chemicals. And we realized that, you know, you could still eat steaks, pork chops, ice cream, fish, pasta, really anything you crave. As long as you made sure that you've understood the sources and know how to eat them.
And so in the instance of... and I've adapted a lot of these to make grass-fed beasts. And which is very easy to find at places like All Foods or at Joes. I've even found it from time to time at Cosco. And it's also very easy to order over the internet.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: As you get together and buy a cow every six months. [] have it split up. That's really inexpensive that you can also order it over the internet from a variety of meal or whatever.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: In eating
grass-fed beef, you're not only avoiding the soy, you're also avoiding the hormones and antibiotic which these animals need in order to stay alive and they're being fed a diet of corn and soy. You're getting all of the healthy Omega-3 fatty acids, CLA and the other nutrients that the animals get from... that have been going to your body.
So you have to think of yourself as,
you have to think of your food chain as not being just you and what you eat. But rather it's you and what you eat and what you ate ate and what that ate and all the things that have passed along that food chain. We kind of look at everything in that manner.
Curtis: Interesting. This is all really fascinating. Now, one of the things that you mentioned was pasta. I found it really interesting, you mentioned that there are antioxidants in pasta.
[Simultaneously talking]
Stephen: Yeah, you know, even your standard sandwich and Melina pasta does contain some whole grains and its much better to you than white bread and those whole grains do contain antioxidants that are an important and healthy part of eating. So you are getting a dose of whole grain even when you're eating bigger portions of pasta. One of the issues, of course, is that we don't really think about what a portion of pasta should be. It should be about the size of a softball.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: What about with Alfredo Sausage you get at food chain restaurant.
Curtis: Sorry my connection cut out there. Now you mentioned ice cream and chocolate. Now, these are superfoods?
Stephen: Yeah.
Curtis: Is that correct?
How are ice cream and chocolate superfoods?Stephen: Well...
Curtis: The New American Diet superfoods.
Stephen: Let's be specific, when we talk of ice cream, we're not talking about Chubby Hubby or anything that's named after a comedy central talk show host or something that...
I want you to really focus on single word ice cream: Vanilla...
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: ...chocolate, coffee, think for the better. I want you to focus, sort of, on the sugar content. When you start adding M&M's and marshmallows and all those other junk into ice cream, that's when it becomes really high in sugar and bad for you.
But there are a lot of brands out there: 2 of them are Edy's and Breyer's that make excellent choices. And what we'll do is we'll take ice cream and then maybe we'll take some dark chocolate, some nuts, some fruit and throw it on top and mix it in and now you have a really, really healthy dessert that is high in calcium, high in Omega-3, maybe I'll throw some Flax seed on it. And, you know, peanut butter, natural peanut butter, not the stuff with the added sugars.
And then, you know, as far as chocolate goes, dark chocolate, in particular, is a superfood.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen:
...more than 70% cocoa content. It's high in fiber, very high in antioxidants and it also has the ability to satisfy craving quickly and efficiently. It's very hard to eat dark chocolate because it is so high in fiber, it's so high in nutrients. When we get hungry, we get hungry because our body needs nutrition. And in, you know, out there today in the market place, you could eat all of the calories you want, you'll not get very much nutrition. And so, it's no wonder that we're so hungry all the time.
If you just focus on filling your meals with nutrients against food, you don't really have to worry that much about calories. Cause
it's hard to over eat when you're focusing on nutrition.
Curtis: Yeah. I'm also looking at [] recommending that people eat boneless, skinless chicken breasts for a long, long time and you mentioned that they contain a lot more fat than they did 30 years ago. Can you...
Stephen: Sure, this is a great example of how we still go along with plants that is wildly outdated. So yes, 50 years ago, boneless, skinless chicken breasts was a very, very healthy option.
Today,
chicken breasts contains 223% more fats than the boneless, skinless chicken breasts that your grandfather ate. And it contains 63% less protein than the boneless, skinless chicken breast your grandfather ate. It's the same animal but it is a wildly different food. And the reason to that is the animal that your grandfather ate lived out on the backyard, poked around for grubs, ate leaves, ate grasses.
And the animal that we eat today that is commercially farmed is fed soy and corn, things that it has not evolve to eat and should the animal become sick, they're given antibiotic in order to keep them healthy, to keep them alive. And feel like the average farm with chicken is like a little
feather covered Keith Richards, ingesting all this stuff,
they need constant medical attention to keep them alive. So when you feed an animal junk, the animal gets fat. And when you don't let the animal around to get some exercise, the animal loses his muscle tone. And when you eat the animal, you're eating food that has more fat and less protein.
Curtis: Well, that makes complete sense and I don't think I'm gonna be able to get that visual of Keith Richards as a chicken out of my head.
Stephen: But again, there's no reason, why not eat a much, much healthier chicken? And you can find pasture-raised chicken which is also going to be high with omega-3 eggs. You find these in the grocery store all the time. Not because they injected the eggs with omega3. its because they fed the chicken like the chicken was meant to eat.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: So the chicken-manufactured eggs that are higher in omega3, higher in nutrients that our bodies want, just as organic milk is much higher in nutrients than regular milk. So there are all of these different reasons why eating more traditionally- raised meaning pasture- raised breast fed animals are much, much healthier for us. From getting more nutrition, getting higher levels of protein, exposure to hormones [] on our exposure to antibiotics. All of these things add up.
And again, what's happening is that eating hamburger a day is bad, there's a little tiny [] and it goes over and over and over again. And right now, there is this, there are more than 1,000 studies being funded with the National Institute of Health looking at the health effects of these chemicals right now.
That's how worried researchers are about this emerging field. And the Endocrine Society, which is the largest organization of endocrinologists with doctors who study hormones came out with a statement earlier this year linking the increase in these chemicals.
Two days ago, the American Medical Association came out endorsing the Endocrine Society view point and urging more study in this field. So this year alone has become an enormous topic and researchers are very, very concerned. In a year, in a world where one in three children born in the last decade will be diagnosed with diabetes.
Curtis: Wow.
Stephen: And adults obesity is a major problem and when people say to me, alright sure, but we eat more than we used to. We watch more TV. We don't exercise. Isn't that the real reason why people are gaining weight. Well look, that plays a role absolutely, calorie gaining, calorie's out plays a role.
But there's one sector of our population that has seen obesity rate increase 73% in the last 3 decades.
Infants.Curtis:
Infants?
Stephen: So either a 4-month old today are not exercising, as much as the 4-month old that are... previous generations. Or they're climbing out of their cribs and they're hitch hiking to McDonald's or there's something else going on here.
And that's our point, there is something else going on here. And it's endocrine disruptors. It's obesogens. We need to take it very, very seriously and start protecting ourselves and our families from them.
Curtis: One more point that I wanted to get to before we end the interview here that's
folate, you mentioned folate in the book a little bit and the importance of folate for weight loss and other things particularly for babies. Could you explain that a little bit?
Stephen: Well, it's fascinating folate in your diet maybe the best individual measure of how healthy your diet is and Americans have stripped fully out of their diet. We've evolved from a society that, number one, ate a lot of
leafy greens and number two, ate animals that ate a lot of leafy greens.
To a society that... [pause] and this animals that subsists mostly on grain.
Michael Pollan has made this point in his book but he didn't really drill down to the issue of folate.
Studies show that people who are dieting with the highest levels of folate will lose eight and a half of times to much weight as dieters who have the lowest levels of folate. Folate is links to, not only, protecting you from depression but solely, actually increases the effectiveness of anti-depression therapies whether it's Serotonin, you know, SSRI's. Like Prozac or whether it's just plain talk therapy.
And, you know, the most likely explanation for why folate is so powerful as a weight loss tool may have to do with this effect on the brain,
it's a mood booster. It also, folate is also carried in foods that are high in fiber so the top sources romaine lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, collard greens. So when you eat more leafy greens of spinach, you're getting the weight loss benefits and you get the mood boosting benefit.
Curtis: Wow. So you recommend the supplementation with folate or would it be better to take it out from your diet.
Stephen: Well we always believe it's better to get it from your diet because it's one thing to isolate out folate and, you know, give it as a supplement but the fact is that we know the foods that come rich in folate also come rich in others.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: With the most important, that are really critical for weight loss. So we know folate rich creams work. We don't if folate supplements work. So let's go with what we know and let's go what we know will help out in those link. So our recommendation is to try to eat a folate-rich plant at lunch time and at dinner time and to eat it first.
Curtis: Okay.
Stephen: So a small salad, a small salad or romaine lettuce. If you order pizza, order the spinach pizza or throw some spinach, order a Cesar salad or throw some spinach into your tomato sauce. I make [] and I'll fry up some [] or some swiss chard, [] put it into the sauce. Those simple things, eat a lot, just a little bit of those green, leafy vegetables.
Try to make them organic when you can. It's usually very easy to find, organic, romaine and spinach.
In the book we talk about the dirty dozen, which are the twelve most emphasized, twelve most pesticide-laden pieces of produce. And we'll talk about the clean fifteen which are fifteen pineapples and papayas and avocados.
Don't spend your money on buying those organic because there's not enough pesticide residue to worry about.
Curtis: Okay. Well this is all very interesting, where do we get the book The New American Diet?
Stephen: The book hits bookstores in December 22 but you can get it off of Amazon right now. []
Curtis: Well, ladies and gentlemen rush out and get a copy of Steve's new book: The New American Diet. It has some really great things in there for you and Steve, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
Stephen: Curtis, I really appreciate the opportunity.
Curtis: Well, that's it for tonight and thanks again.
Keri is getting ready for her wedding!
